I was meditating in the steel grey afternoon. Sitting on my zafu, breathing intent. Peace. And then I hear a mower, a little ways off, tearing into my peaceful place like a ravenous wild dog tearing into a side of beef. The sound of the motor distracts me. Breathe in, breathe out…

Then there was no mower. I hear a bee buzzing. It’s a drone bee, busy at work, tending it’s hive. In an act both nurturing and destructive. Mowing. Caring for his yard and cutting, gas mower puking out bad air, making the hole bigger. That’s what the hippies say about all those motors. But he whistles a happy tune. He’s already done the backyard, and with each turn of the mower as he rounds about to make the next straight row, he can see his fine work. It looks great. All even, straight lines, every piece of grass the exact same length, in his square yard that his little square house sits on.

He’ll weed his flowerbeds and garden next, another act of creating and destroying. Wonder if he’ll use Round-Up? I hear a weed-whacker…Bzzzz.

Then I am back again, chillin’ on my zafu. The bee stops humming. I hear a weed-whacker in the distance. I try to focus quickly, I want to get back the groovy bee hive. It felt good in that hive. I decide on the best way to focus, and I do.

I hear a truck. A big truck. A working truck. It distracts me again, breathe in…breathe out.

Then he was a bee too. He was a different kind of be, busy with something else. My consciousness reached out and I saw him behind the wheel of his spewing truck. He’s a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker with a fondness for whiskey. He’s getting in a cigarette before he goes to the McDonalds down the street. He’s getting a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. “Supersize me sweetheart.” He winks.

I hear another bee, it’s the first one I heard, mower bee. His vibe is different. With focused intent, to make his own little neck of the hive pretty, he is still busy with his weed-whacker. Regardless of the methods he was taught to use, he is nourishing his yard. He knows it, so it’s true. One bee is nourishing, the other…not so much.

What part do I play in the hive? Am I just an observer? Do I want to be a bee?

And I feel the zafu under me again, breathing. There’s no weed-whacker this time, it’s a hammer now. The hammer is hammering a nail, as hammers are wont to do.

Ok. Focus…I speak and the universe listens. So I speak, “Focus.”

And there is no hammer, there’s a bee, its weed-whacker bee, busy as one anyway. Nurturing. Then I am a bee. I am in the hive and still trying to figure out my place there. I can feel other bees, it’s not the harmony you would think.

Bees are having problems. Bees are being poisoned. Lost, disoriented, even worried.

Some nurture, some not so much. Just like people. People are being poisoned too, they just choose it, for the most part. Another main difference between people and bees is that we have individuality and that vibe doesn’t flow in a hive. To quote Alobar the immortal Bohemian, a character in the Tom Robbins novel Jitterbug Perfume, “Our individuality is all, all that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life’s bittersweet route.”

We may have to give up some of the benefits of a more hive-like existence, but we can choose how much. I mean weed-whacker bee certainly wasn’t going to come over and whack my weeds, but perhaps his family is his hive. Perhaps his house and his family function in their own hivey little ways.

There are spiritualists who would suggest that to be more hive-like is what we should strive for, to be that connected is to be closer to the divine. Perhaps the Queen bee stays in the hive because she is the spirit of the hive. Perhaps she doesn’t need to leave the hive because she IS that connected, she can see everything, feel everything from right where she is. But she’s not free. Or is she the ultimate free? No veil, think there, and there you will bee. Ahem. Or is she trapped? In exchange for her type of freedom she traded in her individuality.

Humans, with all our flaws, pride our individuality. We cannot live hive-like. My place in the hive doesn’t exist. I am human and despite being able to wrap my head around the spiritual undertones and possible benefits of the hive mind, I can’t wrap my heart around it. I quote Tom Robbins again, “The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.” So we get to choose, when we feel the urge, to create our own hives. Mini-hives. And we function in each one as efficiently as we choose. Just like we poison ourselves by choice and choose to what degree, we make our hives, we have to live in them.

I speak and the Universe listens.I listen and the Universe speaksThat’s hive-like too.Hives within hives,And more hives without.Which are you in?Which do you visit?Which do you rule?To what end?Free to decide, as individuals.